He’s a first-rate prog-rock guitarist who plays second fiddle to a flute. But what Guitar World readers really want to know is...

"For that one, Neil just started playing it and we all joined in. I think right before we began, he said something like, 'You know, when we go to the verse it goes to these changes…' and he showed us. Nobody really knew when that was gonna happen, but we just followed along. And there might have been some rough spots. I might have dropped my guitar down a couple times. [laughs] But other than that, that was it. That’s the first take. For years I’ve been telling people that when we get together and jam, it’s just like that. But it was never recorded. "

Not everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, and for Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains, that’s a good thing these days. Earlier this year Cantrell had what he calls “a thunderbolt moment” in a Vegas recording studio, and one that he now looks on as perhaps the high-water mark of his long career. It was the kind of moment Cantrell can’t stop talking about, and in the course of several interviews, over progressive days, the guitarist goes back again and again to an image of…well, a piano.